Two days ago, I hiked my first ever mountain. Sure, I’ve hiked some mountains, some hills. But this was a 1400m high mountain. A legit mountain. I was stoked. I started around 10:30 am, from Queenstown, and took the Tiki Trail up with a girl from the hostel. I think she might have originally been…
Category: adventures
on 31: a birthday alone
Confession time. I spent my birthday weekend alone. And it was glorious. Most of the time. After telling the guy I was seeing to get out of my house, I took advantage of my four and a half days off to go through to Queenstown, Kinloch, and Wanaka. I had originally planned to go to…
travel essay: hiking the bealey spur track
It was the perfect day for a hike. We awoke in the crisp autumn air, a slight icy condensation on the car windows, to a hazily clear sky and snow peaked mountains all around us. Taylor and I both knew we wanted to hike; what we didn’t know was which track. We had camped the…
flying high with flying kiwi
About two weeks before I left Paihia, I got a surprise text from Taylor: want to go parasailing?! Um, yes.
travel essay: hiking mount taranaki
I crawl out of bed in the grey dawn light and make my way to the kitchen. I’m about to attempt hiking Mount Taranaki, near New Plymouth, New Zealand, with my friend Dan. We are both hikers, but Taranaki is a strenuous hike and the weather doesn’t look great. Dan is already up, his leaving…
road trip gone wrong
It was a sad day in Paihia. My lovely little Henrietta – a 1996 Honda CR-V – had died. We weren’t together very long, which is why this hurt so bad! Having a car was a big deal to me here – it means freedom and adventure. Dealing with the bus is generally difficult and…
road tripping new zealand’s north island
Back in late December, I was chatting with my friend Paul – of the Taupo/Tongariro expedition – and I mentioned that I was thinking about road tripping up the North Island, from Wellington to Auckland. He said he’d be down for it as well, so we started to make plans and actually try to make…
my new year resolutions
Well, it’s that time again… time for me to write a blog post about how I have all these resolutions… and then blatantly ignore it. This year, I’m trying something a little bit different. none of that “I’m going to lose ten pounds” crap… although now that I think about it, I should probably get…
travel essay: flying over leconte glacier
We drive down the dock, the rear of the van scraping the incline as we bump down the wooden planks. Ahead is our transportation for the afternoon. A float plane, also known as an Alaskan taxi. The plane is tiny, and it’s floats are almost bigger than the plane itself. We are six passengers and…
travel essay: hiking at stephen’s garden, svalbard
It isn’t the North Pole, and it isn’t even the northernmost point that my feet touched land that week. But hiking at Stephen’s Garden in Svalbard is the highest we went: approximately 1500 feet. Leaving the ship anchored in her small cove in front of a glacier, our zodiacs zipped around the fjord entrance, depositing…